Day: August 22, 2008

Happy 88th to Ray Bradbury.

I may have to go re-read “Boys! Grow Giant Mushrooms in Your Basement!” In the meantime, via Jeff Ford, here’s a Soviet-era animated version of Bradbury’s story “There Will Come Soft Rains.”

• Spammers are getting craftier. Tell me you wouldn’t be curious about an e-mail labeled “Stephen Hawking defends Paris Hilton sex allegations”.
• Speaking of spam, Basil Fawlty just sent me some: “Don’t mention the war!” it warned.
• Wear your favorite film on your eyeglasses. I think my favorite part is when the optician and designer, Zakarias Tipton, says he “began testing all sorts of plastic until I found my father’s record collection, and then I started recycling those without his knowledge”. I’m sure dear old dad was pleased with that. (Unless this is the first time he’s reading about it. Oh, but wouldn’t it be ironic if his father couldn’t read about it because he didn’t have glasses?) The frames themselves are a little boxy and thick for my own personal taste.
• Keith Phipps wonders, “What does it mean when our dystopian fantasies have gotten even more pessimistic since the malaise-driven ’70s?” Whereas his colleague Nathan Rabin writes, “Satirists seemingly can’t go wrong by predicting that the world will grow ever more stupid and cynical, that it will plunge lower and lower in its zeal to reach the lowest common denominator. Hope and optimism inevitably look foolish and myopic, not their opposites.”
• You’ve probably seen this all over elsewhere — I have — but it’s really very funny: Selections from H.P. Lovecraft’s Brief Tenure as a Whitman’s Sampler Copywriter. “You must not think me mad when I tell you what I found below the thin shell of chocolate used to disguise this bonbon’s true face.”
• Ellen Datlow on proper manuscript formatting. It’s actually an interesting discussion (if you care about that sort of thing), and in the comments Datlow succinctly explains just why formatting submissions is an issue: “Why would a writer do something that COULD be misunderstood instead of something that couldn’t be misunderstood?”
• It’s funny: see a head mirror on a cartoon character, even a modern one, and we think “doctor.” But when’s the last time you saw an actual doctor wear one? [via]
• Hmm. Wifi while you fly? It’s unlikely to be available when I fly to Los Angeles next week — which is probably just as well. [via]
• “Barbie has always been on the tarty side and this is taking it too far.” The S&M look is apparently unintentional, as the character is based on DC’s Black Canary. Her S&M look, however, looks to be entirely intentional. [via]
• Making decisions tires your brain. Which suggests that, maybe, we should consider making those really important, life-altering decisions not too long after we wake up in the morning. But I’m not sure how much I trust any decision made that early. [via]
• Deep Hurting! “SCI FI Channel announced a slate of 36 new original action movies–up from 2008’s total of 24–slated for its SCI FI Saturday timeslot and a new Sunday-evening movie slot, beginning next year.” I wonder how late in the day they signed off on this…
• And finally, could we please declare a moratorium on the phrase “It’s not really science fiction“?